Best single player/career racing games

i want to get a really good offline racing game for ps3. Got Gran Turismo 5 and ive been playing it and though its an amazing driving Sim, its a boring racer in single player.
In gt5 there seems to be no real racing challenge as to beat a race all you have to do is buy a better car and you can beat everyone . It seems really unbalanced unless im missing something.

Anyone know any other racing games with great single player progression?

I just dont understand on gt5 how i can enter races with an overpowered car and win all the events.
Where is the driving skill in that!!?? Is there no balancing. It feels pointless racing! Its all about which car you have rather than how u race! Are most other driving games like this? There shoukd be a car criteria for each race to stop this. Also upu can cut corners where ever you like with no penalty!

ltbobby wrote:
I just dont understand on gt5 how i can enter races with an overpowered car and win all the events.
Where is the driving skill in that!!?? Is there no balancing. It feels pointless racing! Its all about which car you have rather than how u race! Are most other driving games like this? There shoukd be a car criteria for each race to stop this. Also upu can cut corners where ever you like with no penalty!

If you restrain yourself and use cars that are slightly worse than the AI's ones, it's more of a challenge. GT4 rewarded you for that with some sort of GT points or whatever, I think you couldn't buy anything with that though.

But yes, it's a stupid system.

I still found it the best racing game, but the first DIRT wasn't half bad, even though it's pretty unrealistic. Dirt 2 and 3 sucked, but 1 was still more about rallying than showing off and fireworks.

I'll second GRID, some awesome arcade racing, the AI feel crazy/realistic at the same time. Career progression is basic, but has some interesting twists like hiring a team-mate to race with you. Probably a fiver now, and Grid2 hits soon.
Edit - it still has the 'buy better car to win' thing.

I still think the original Colin Mcrae rally games were all kinds of awesome. You really had to learn the courses and the handling was pretty damn good for its time. It was hard but it was fun at the same time.

I cant believe how bad Gt5 is as a racing game. Its an amazing driving simulator but as a racer its shit! Weird!
Its all about buying and upgrading cars rather than driving skill. How can this not be mentioned in reviews?

If you have even a crappy pc and want a sim then get GTR 2, it still holds up brilliantly today. Obviously the graphics are plain and the menu system is terrible but everything else still feels great. It was going for about £2 in the last Steam sale!